:: GussetBLOG ::

:: Friday, May 30, 2008 ::

Biophony

Clive Thompson on How Man-Made Noise May Be Altering Earth's Ecology

Bernie Krause listens to nature for a living. The 69-year-old is a field recording scientist: He heads into the wilderness to document the noises made by native fauna — crickets chirping in the Amazon rain forest, frogs croaking in the Australian outback.

But Krause has noticed something alarming. The natural sound of the world is vanishing. He'll be deep inside the Amazon, recording that cricket, but when he listens carefully he also hears machinery: The distant howl of a 747 or the dull roar of a Hummer miles way.

Krause has a word for the pristine acoustics of nature: biophony. It's what the world sounds like in the absence of humans. But in 40 percent of the locations where Krause has recorded over the past 40 years, human-generated noise has infiltrated the wilderness. "It's getting harder and harder to find places that aren't contaminated," he says.

This isn't just a matter of aesthetics. The contamination of biophony may soon become a serious environmental issue — Krause says that man-made sounds are already wreaking havoc with animal communication. We worry about the carbon emissions from SUVs and airplanes; maybe we should be equally concerned about the racket they cause. ...

Labels: Acoustics, Ecology, Noise

:: Dan 30.5.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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HPS
Originally uploaded by gusset.

Holland Park, London, at sunset, from the roof of Holland Park School. Noise survey in progress.

My ex-colleague klem@s has taken a break from stalking random women around London to create an Acoustic Engineering flickr pool. I've used it as an excuse to upload a bunch of site photos I've previously not had reason to, like the above.

Labels: Acoustics, Flickr

:: Dan 25.5.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Space as a Symphony of Turning Off Sounds
[via bldg blog]

Or alternative title, 'Artist has no idea about basic acoustics and designs stupid toy that will never work'

Labels: Acoustics

:: Dan 29.4.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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"We’re not just talking typical city noise," the article says, "but what scientists here say is more like living inside a factory."

Bldg Blog on noise in Cairo

"Provided I can ever get my act together on this, I've got a long and totally fascinating interview with Jace Clayton, aka DJ /rupture, coming up here on the blog, in which we discuss the sonic qualities of cities, focusing on New York and arriving there via Marrakech, Barcelona, and even Rennes, France."

That sounds really interesting. You can, incedntally, hear DJ/Rupture's appearnce on the Goatlab Radio show here:
GoatLab Radio with Parasite and special guest DJ/Rupture - October 2007

Bldg Blog continues, "I'm tempted to organize something called World Noise Day*. Make your city as loud as possible. Take advantage of car horns, personal stereos, supermarket broadcast systems, and the local radio. Play Merzbow† all day, cruising loops in boom cars. Rebuild Luigi Russolo's intonarumori. Install Japanese war tubas and British sound mirrors throughout the city. Turn on hair dryers. Yodel. Record the sounds of noise in the morning – and play them again that night, much louder."

* Of course our friend Shitmat already runs an annual National Noise Day here in the UK.
† And coincidentally I have a gig with Merzbow on Friday! He's playing at the Croft just before Goatlab starts (thanks to some strange booking thing I won't go into).
Look like the UK is one step ahead here.

Labels: Acoustics, architecture, Noise

:: Dan 16.4.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Oobject's Guide to Anechoic Chamber Architecture
"In this kind of space, no one can hear you scream. Anechoic chambers use spiked walls to eliminate echoes, the end result might literally sound dull but the visual effect can be stunning, such as at the enormous anechoic hangar. Vote for your faves."

[via Music Thing]

"There is nothing not to love at Oobject's Guide to Anechoic Chamber Architecture. Above is AFJ International's tank-sized chamber, and the Auditory Localization Facility is a person-sized loudspeaker-filled geodesic sphere packing a generous punch of awesome. Less high-minded readers might also enjoy Nick Knight's rather splendid fashion/audio crossover The Sound of Clothes, which includes several not entirely SFW videos."

Labels: Acoustics, architecture, Fashion

:: Dan 15.3.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Noise more important than environment says NAT

Labels: Acoustics, Environment, News, Noise, Politics

:: Dan 21.2.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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'Cloak of silence' design is unveiled
Two independent teams of researchers have come up with a recipe for making special materials that could completely cloak an object from sound. Although the “acoustic metamaterials” have yet to be made, a third team is now trying to create a real cloak. These metamaterials promise to guide sound waves around an enshrouded object as if the object wasn’t there. As well as being used to conceal submarines from detection by sonar, such metamaterials could be used to improve the acoustics in concert halls.

Pope calls off university visit
The protests of nearly 70 scientists, including former CERN director general Luciano Maiani, have forced Pope Benedict XVI to cancel tomorrow’s visit to La Sapienza University in Rome. The scientists, who expressed their objections in a joint letter to the university’s rector earlier this week, deemed the visit would be “incongruous” with the Pope’s previous support of the persecution of Galileo in the 17th century.

Labels: Acoustics, Physics, Religion

:: Dan 18.1.08 [Arc] [1 comments] [links to this post] ::
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If Its Hip Its Here: Speaker Manufacturers Turn Up The Volume On Design

Example: The B&W Nautilus

Labels: Acoustics, Design, Hi-Fi

:: Dan 17.1.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Noise might cause huge ocean waves - physicsworld.com
"Every so often mariners report the sighting of a huge wave towering up to 30 m above the regular swells of the ocean surface. No one is sure why these rogue waves form, but now physicists in the US and Germany have managed to produce equivalent optical rogue waves by launching laser pulses into photonic-crystal fibres. Having performed computer simulations of the optical system, the researchers suggest that optical rogue waves, and therefore oceanic rogue waves, are seeded by noise."

Labels: Acoustics, Physics

:: Dan 21.12.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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'This is our world: the acoustics of vegetables'
The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra serves up a musical feast at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
[via grom]

Labels: Acoustics, Food, Music, Video

:: Dan 18.12.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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I mentioned Trevor Cox's new acoustics programme on Radio 4 last week. If you missed it you can listen again here: The Sounds of Science.
[13MB MP3 from podcast]
The second (and final) programme is on tonight at 9pm GMT.

Labels: Acoustics, Radio4, science

:: Dan 31.10.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Iannis Xenakis: Phillips Pavilion, Poème Electronique, Edgard Varèse [Brussels 1958]
I've read a lot about, and listened to a lot of, Xenakis’s music, so it's interesting to see something pop up about his architecture now and again. Especially when it was designed as a specific audio/visual display space.

Labels: Acoustics, architecture, Art, Visuals

:: Dan 24.10.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Heads up for:
The Sounds of Science: Bad Vibes and Good Vibrations
Wednesday 24 October 2007 21:00-21:30 (Radio 4 FM)
Trevor Cox investigates the science of sound research.

"Why do we find some sounds pleasant while others grate on the ears? The answer leads unexpectedly to the origins of music via some Tamarin monkeys, a remote tribe in Cameroon and the home of JS Bach."

I guess this is going to be similar to the acoustics for kids presentations he was doing earlier in the year and will probably make use of the results of the Sound 101 experiment.

I like to see acoustics getting some media attention and explanation – too many people regard it as some sort of black art – and Trev is very good at explaining these things to the public.

Labels: Acoustics, Radio4

:: Dan 22.10.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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BLDG BLOG is a brilliant blog of "architectural conjecture, urban speculation & landscape futures," that I have just discovered thanks to Natali linking to this post about Hot-Mapping. Apparently Haringey Council have been busy flying planes over their district taking thermal images of the area. The council explains it here and full maps of the region are available here. It's interesting to look over. I would genuinely be interested to see how my own house compared to others around it. I'm sure it would be exactly the same as all the others on the estate (it is new build) but I'd really like to know how it compares to houses of different ages and see how age and build vary. The comment on the blog bring up privacy issues, although I'm not sure how much heat loss your house suffers from is a private issue? As long as vigilantes don't start searching out energy loss offenders I think it's pretty harmless from that point of view and I think I'd like to see more councils doing it.



The blog also has two noise related posts from the last week or so. This one following up an interview with neurologist Oliver Sacks about the affects of noise on people. It's interesting although, as with psychology generally, it relies heavily on the exceptional cases rather than the norm. I guess that makes things a lot easier to test and interpret.

This lowest common denominator approach is similar to the way the World Health Organisation Guidelines for Community Noise are based on preventing adverse health affects in the most sensitive population. From conversations with the papers co-editor Birgitta Berglund I know that children in particular are her largest concern. Perhaps by designing to ensure the protection of the most sensitive we can bring down average noise levels over a period of time?

(The Erik Satie anecdote sounds like he failed to do Eno was doing with Music for Airports etc. I imagine these days you could get away with it without anybody flinching. Sometime a space without background music seems odd.)

There is also a post about intentional additions to urban noise to make cities sound more "musical" and to help mask more unpleasant sounds. Soudscaping cities is a bit of a buzz word with architects these days and I've been involved in the soundscaping of some major district developments in the middle-east (without ever actually going there annoying!) I'm interested to see how this study pans out.

Labels: Academic, Acoustics, architecture, Art, Maps, Noise

:: Dan 30.9.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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"For anyone involved with work on anything that might involve exposure of musicians or employed staff to music noise the following web site has a lot of very good information and useful links. According to this week’s EHN the HSE has released this as a portfolio of draft advice for the industry. Comments on the web site are invited (there is a “Feedback” button on the home page) by 12 October. This is in advance of the provisions becoming applicable to the entertainment sector as of next April."

Music and Entertainment Sector Working Group in conjunction with HSE

"Sound Advice brings you the recommendations of the Music and Entertainment Sector Working Group. Experts from different sectors in the music and entertainment industry have worked together with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to identify good practice. On this site you will find out what you can do to avoid the harmful effects of prolonged exposure to noise - for yourself and for the people you employ or work with."

I have to deal with this problem from both ends, working as an acoustic consultant during the day and as a (very) amateur musician and DJ in the evenings. I've frequently had problems with levels when I've been playing in clubs, from being unnecessarily limited due to badly designed buildings to being uncomfortably loud (for both me and the audience) due to deaf club owners who keep bumping up the volume. I maintain my general advice to clubbers which is to wear ear plugs whenever you go clubbing, especially if you go frequently.

Labels: Acoustics, Noise

:: Dan 15.8.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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I found an article in The Guardian last week about The art of reducing your computer's noise
It's interesting, but contains appalling use of db rather than dB, an unforgivable offence in the world of acoustics, but at least there's no use of Db *shudder*
For more detailed advice here is Sound on Sound's guide to Advanced PC Silencing
And my personal favourite solution, the Oil Cooled computer.

Labels: Acoustics, Computing, Noise

:: Dan 18.6.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to ban the sale and use of recorded music containing ultra low frequency bass."

Noise nuisance is a serious problem, but you can't just ban music with bass. And especially "ultra low frequency bass." I hazard a guess they don't no what they are referring to there. What I'd call ultra low frequency would be well outside of the audible range.

They then get a bit delusional and imply there is some sort of conspiracy to irritate them: "It is created by the selfish actions of those who enjoy inflicting it upon the population by purchasing special loudspeakers (whoofers[sic]) to transmit the noise at large volumes through the open windows of their houses and vehicles. Such noise is deliberately recorded by the industry in order to encourage this behaviour.."

Among the first few signatures on the petition you'll notice, "U. Should Fuckoff",
"you fucking loser."

[via parasite]

Labels: Acoustics, Humour, News

:: Dan 12.6.07 [Arc] [1 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Power to the party people: Eco-clubbing is coming

"An average-size club, open three nights a week, consumes 150 times the energy a four-person family does in a year. ... It's perhaps the ultimate consumerist activity. ... Enviu/Doll plan to take eco-clubbing to a new level. The collaboration has resulted in a number of systems, currently in development, that could minimise the footprint of clubbing. ... For example, the principles of acoustic design are based around the same as those applied to Roman amphitheatres, where the sound is encouraged to bounce off surfaces, thus allowing music to be played at a considerably reduced volume ... the lighting uses the same LED technology found in car tail-lights.
[the roof space] incorporates small tubes in which to collect rain water, which is then heated by sunlight to provide warm water to the wash basins within the club below. ... one thing clubbers do a lot of is sweat. Loaded with warm perspiration, the air rises, where it is sucked out of the space, passed through a cooling chamber where it condenses and can then be used to flush the lavatories. ... Most inventive of all is the development of a dance floor that converts the movement of clubbers on it into electricity."

Labels: Acoustics, Clubs, Environment, Music

:: Dan 5.6.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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The Machine's Got Rhythm: Computers are learning to understand music and join the band
Interesting piece on advances in computer analysis of music [via dev.null]. Not any huge leap really as the same technique has been applied well to speech analysis over the last few years. And in acoustics has been used to design acoustic diffusers too.
Ref:


As someone who has studied this field academically (my dissertation for my degree was on Algorithmic Composition and Synthesis) this is an interesting advance. Predictably the Musicians Union are upset about it. They do have a tendency to get the knickers in a twist about things they perceive as endangering musicians job yet never transpire to do so. Historically they have resisted many advancements in electronic music composition and production on grounds of job losses. (Here's one classic example.)

Although, they may have a point in this case as it is somebody's job to transcribe music to piano for publishing as a record of song writing for copyright reasons. However, these versions are often then transcribed back from piano to their original instruments when you buy books of printed music in shops, and are sometimes miles from what was originally written. If an automated process can help to reduce these errors I'm all for it.

What I'm must interested in is what it may contribute to the composition and production process. It's highly likely it will initially serve to further propagate more and more similar pre-packaged music. Like the music machines that churn out tunes for the proles in Orwell's 1984. You may be forgiven for thinking this happens already if you listen to the charts or most commercial radio stations. And of course it will be most profitably used in those music identification systems that listen to bits of music then sale you ringtones etc.

But what if you taught it to think differently? Introduced mutations to see what happens? Or to try to do something that is as far as possible from the norm? It could be made into just as powerful a tool for experimentation as it could for formulisation. That's what I'd want to hear.

Labels: Academic, Acoustics, Computing, Electronic Music

:: Dan 27.4.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Electronic Journal "Technical Acoustics" is a Russian based peer-reviewed scientific journal that unlike most others makes all of its papers freely available online. Being peer-reviewed does give it a degree of trustworthiness that a lot of other online sources lack. It does however charges submission fees to the authors (€150/$180) for publishing the papers. Scroll down to the History links in the 'Free resources in the Internet' section the bottom for useful stuff like the sketchy History of electronic music (highly incomplete but includes some good pointers) and Electronic Musical Instruments (1870 – 1990).

Labels: Academic, Acoustics, Electronic Music

:: Dan 16.4.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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2260 Sketch
Originally uploaded by gusset.

Found when clearing out. A little sketch I did when I was sat by the side of an A-road (in Wigan, I think) doing a noise survey, around 1998 or '99. The thing on the tripod is a B&K 2260 Sound Level Meter. The road was hidden from my seated point of view but you can still see the streetlights. As I wasn't really thinking about what I was doing it's on the lined side of the paper. If I'd thought to turn it over there wouldn't be vertical stripes all over it. Doh.

Labels: Acoustics, Art, Sketch

:: Dan 10.4.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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ThinkGeek :: Sonic Bomb Alarm Clock with Bed Shaker
"The Sonic Bomb Clock has an adjustable volume alarm with a maximum loudness of 113 decibels (just for reference, a jackhammer is about 100 decibels!) And the bed shaker does just that. Slip it under your mattress and your ears will bleed and your bed will shake, and there is no way you will oversleep."

Beyond the jackhammer reference let me further elaborate that 5 minutes at that level (assuming 113 dB is a calculated A-weighted sound power, which would equate to 105 dB(A) & 1m in a hemispherical space) would be enough to take you into the realms of hearing damage. I would strongly advise ageists using this at maximum level over extended periods.

Labels: Acoustics

:: Dan 25.2.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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